The Warren Wilson College in Asheville NC was the perfect setting for the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators annual conference. Among the great plenary sessions, breakout sessions and evening events (including a spectacular drum circle), participants were enthralled in catching up with old and new friends. Besides my duties as Outreach Director (the lovely picture if of the Board of Directors at the conference closing banquet), I had the opportunity to instruct the half-day workshop ‘augmented reality for scientific illustrators’.

My role on the Board of Directors of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators has changed. I am now the Outreach Director, responsible for all the communications and newsletters. Lots of ideas to put into practice starting in the Fall to make the GNSI an even more special group of talented and friendly artists. Check out the social media coverage of the 2016 conference that took place in Santa Cruz CA. Don’t miss the awesome time-lapse video of the collaborative painting of a chalk mural and the three live broadcast videos from plenary speakers extraordinaire, John Muir Laws, David Goodsell and Terryl Whitlatch.

The week before traveling to a conference where I’ll be giving a presentation is always a rush! Heading to Minneapolis in 8 days and couldn’t be more excited about the program and meeting the other attendees and presenters. And best of all, I was honored to be given one of the few scholarships that the MCN Scholarship Committee hands out every year! It is extremely generous support and facilitates the interaction with many other museum professionals. Looking forward to this trip.

Our proposal to present Skin & Bones at the famous SXSW Interactive festival that takes place every year in Austin is now up for public voting. See the video above that we recorded to include in the proposal and vote for us!

Packing and reviewing all the details to travel to this year’s Guild of Natural Science Illustrators annual conference, at the Arcadia University in Glenside, PA. One week of catching up with old friends and colleagues, meeting new ones and contributing to the GNSI in the role of Membership Director.

Part of the production team of Skin & Bones attended the Smithsonian Digitization Fair to give a sneak peek of the upcoming release of the long expected mobile app. The Digitization Program Office who organized the Fair and contributed with resources for the production of the app has published a nice blog post about the project.

Who would know that every year there is a conference dedicated exclusively to bring together comic artists and public health professionals? It’s the result of the wonderful work done by Graphic Medicine that promotes the creation of materials for patients and physicians to communicate better. I attended the conference given my interest in the use of comics for communication in science and was greatly impressed by the initiative and presentations.